Monroe Anderson

For blacks, the money IS greener on the other side

         

The Rev. Jesse Jackson scolded Democrats, seeking their party’s presidential nomination, for not giving the urban agenda any priority, in his syndicated newspaper column Tuesday. "The Democratic candidates -- with the exception of John Edwards, who opened his campaign in New Orleans' Ninth Ward and has made addressing poverty central to his campaign -- have virtually ignored the plight of African Americans in this country,” Jackson wrote.

    It is a mystery why Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the second-and-third-tier bidders for the Democratic nomination apparently believe the African American economy isn’t worth at least a little lip service. We know how bad the economy is for poor black folks but it looks like it’s now the black middle class’s turn: a double dose of depressing news from two recent economic reports indicate as much.
     One study revealed that the black middle class is downwardly mobile. African American children are making less money than their middle class parents did a generation ago. The other, a survey released last month, indicated that many blacks making $50,000 a year or more need a little know-how on putting their money to work for them.
    Both reports can be summed up with this one message: When it comes to wealth, white folks are still ahead.
     "Startlingly, almost half (45 percent) of black children whose parents were solidly middle class end up falling to the bottom of the income distribution, compared to only 16 percent of white children," a Pew Charitable Trust Study recently reported. "Achieving middle-income status does not appear to protect black children from future economic adversity the same way it protects white children."
    Middle class African American children, born in the Black Power Movement days of the late 1960s, are less likely to bring home as many greenbacks as their middle class parents did. Odds are those white middle class children from that same era and same economic background will do better. While only 31 percent of black middle class children will make more money than their parents, 68 percent of white middle class children will.
    This three steps forward, two steps back, money march for black America should be anything but startling. The black nuclear family has fallen into the one-in-four range, while the baby's daddy syndrome has become all too common. Euro-American parents, advantaged by white privilege, have more wealth than African-American parents, who are encumbered by racism. White salaries outpace black ones. Homes in white communities are assessed at higher values than identical homes in black communities. And whites are more financially literate than blacks.
    A black paper, released last month by Chicago-based Ariel Capital Management, the nation's largest black-owned mutual fund company, and Charles Schwab Corp., a San Francisco-based provider of brokerage and retirement plans, notes that whites are much more savvy than blacks when it comes to money. When African Americans actually accept the pay-yourself-first rule of thumb, they are either unable or unwilling to follow it as well as they should. Blacks making $50,000 annually or more save an average of $182 a month, while whites with matching income save an average of $261 a month. The bottom line: The overall value of savings and investments for whites is an average of $100,000 but only $48,000 for blacks.
    Ariel and Schwab, who have been looking at the investment habits of blacks and whites earning more than $50,000 annually for the past 10 years, report that African American participation in the stock market is the same now as it was in 1998. Back then it was 57 percent of blacks and 81 percent of whites. Last month's survey found that 57 percent of blacks and 76 percent of whites reported that they owned stock mutual funds or individual stocks.
    In addition to investing in a greater percentage, whites also start investing in their 30s, no matter what they make. Many blacks think they have to wait until they're bringing in a six-figure income.
    That contributes to the black middle class marking time while whites surge ahead. John W. Rogers, Jr., Ariel's CEO, said he thought the difference in approach was cultural: "You learn about investing money when you have money to invest."
   And if those who-would-be-president don’t think the African American economy merits serious discussion, then more and more blacks won’t be learning about money.

Oh, Oh, Oh--it's the Oprah and Obama show

 

    To borrow a catchphrase from another TV celebrity, next month Oprah Winfrey–who has put her money where her mouth is–will kick it up a notch. The Media Goddess has already thrown Barack Obama a lavish Hollywood party that raised $3 million for his coffers. Now she promises to stomp the campaign trail just weeks before the balloting begins, pressing the flesh in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for her favorite candidate.
    The double-O team is sure to cross paths with Mrs. and Mr. C. Since Barack routinely draws larger crowds than Hillary and his other opponents during campaign rallies, an Oprah-Obama ticket all but assures SRO gatherings, out drawing the Hillary Clinton-and-husband attraction, partially because it will be a limited engagement. Big crowds, though, don’t always count when it comes down to the ballot box. And it remains to be seen if selling Obama, the presidential candidate, will be as easy as selling Barack, the author.
    So stay tuned. The show starts soon.
    Meanwhile, here’s an ebonyjet.com column I wrote on September 17. What I said then holds for now. In other words, we’re still waiting. We’ll still see.

Oprah: Kingmaker
will america buy obama as her favorite thing?
Monday, September 17, 2007
By Monroe Anderson

Will Oprah's rush on Obama count when her millions of viewers go to the polls? Or will backing Barack cost the Queen-of-All-Media in viewers, readers and listeners, since the majority of them are white women, who, subconsciously or not, identify with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner?

Even as we wait to see what gives in these waning days of white male supremacy in America, Oprah, a twofer, finds herself at odds. There lurks a danger in her double identity. As a black woman who made her fame and fortune by speaking to and for all American women, should she faithfully endorse the white female candidate over the black male challenger?

That's sure to cross the minds of some of Oprah's loyal white viewers who think of her as one of them. They may come to realize that in endorsing a liberal, black Democrat, Oprah is one herself.

Meanwhile, there are those out there who are not comfortable with the entrance of the richest, most powerful woman in America into the fray.  As they see it, Oprah is politically incorrect. Complaints run rampant that Ms. O is far too powerful and influential to don the role of king maker. Why doesn't she just stick to giving away cars and making best-selling authors? She has an estimated 49 million weekly viewers. Seventy-five percent of them women, for chrissakes. What if she pulls off a Vulcan mind meld?

The notion that they are so easily influenced, lacking any interest in independent thought, will come as a surprise to Oprah's viewers who are under the impression that they're being informed, not transformed into an army of O-zombies. Then there's the still-in-effect "Carson rule." Last millennium, Johnnie Carson, the late king of late night TV, made it a practice to never publicly endorse a political candidate.

Oprah didn't go there but neither did she mince words about her support for Obama, publicly announcing that she won't have any other candidates on her show because she couldn't even feign neutrality. And, after last week's big bucks bash for Obama, we believe it.

The Queen’s fundraiser at her $50 million Montecito estate commanded asset-humbling numbers: 1,657 deep pockets and pocket books shelled out $2,300 apiece to add more than $3 million to the Illinois senator's already hefty war chest. Profiling at the double-O fundraiser (which looked more like her Legends Ball) was a gaggle of celebrities, including Sidney Poitier, director George Lucas, music producer Russell Simmons, Forrest Whitaker, Grey's Anatomy's Ellen Pompeo, Dennis Haysbert, former basketball players Bill Russell and Charles Oakley. Bebe Winnans and Stevie Wonder sang for their supper.

A Newsweek magazine poll earlier this month found that only three percent of celebrity endorsements bear any influence on voters' decisions.  Celebrities from Madonna to Willie Nelson to Martin Sheen to Bon Jovi to George Clooney have all endorsed candidates, to no avail.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Oprah is different. She is no mere mortal celebrity. She possesses superpowers and skills out of this world. If Oprah is going to discuss a book on her show, bookstores automatically order extra copies. When she asked dedicated viewers to "get with the program," legions of hefty women tried to downsize. Her "favorite things" shows reduce her audience to tears. No doubt about it: when the Titan of Talk speaks, American women listen.

Still, the question remains, is selling a black presidential candidate as easy as selling a book? Time and Jet will tell. But, in the meantime, we already know this for sure: It's great to be the Queen.

Monroe Anderson is a frequent contributor to ebonyjet.com

Sisters are doin' it for themselves

 

     African-American Woman: Where They Stand, a week-long series, kicked off this evening on NBC Nightly News with correspondent Rehema Ellis reporting on how well education has served them–while leaving black males far behind.
    Ellis reported that 64 percent of black college students are women, “outnumbering black men in some colleges 7 to 1.”
    Such a gender disparity in education goes straight to the bottom line. In a five-year period, Ellis reported, the number of businesses owned by black women jumped 75 percent compared to 29 percent for black men. It also influences who holds the purse strings, literally: Black women control 62 percent of the black community’s $850 billion spending power.
    Tomorrow night the series will air a report on what effect getting a better education and bagging a bigger bankroll is having on African American women’s relationships. I've just seen the report on line and it's not good. While black women are less likely to date out of their ethnic group than others, that too is changing.
    “There should be a whole month or at least a week dedicated to black women. Just something nice, yeah, do something nice for black women week. Hold the door for a black woman, give a black woman a compliment, maybe even some flowers. Rub her feet for her, do her laundry or just write her a note,” writes the Classical One, a white man who prefers black women, on the whitemenforblackwomen blogspot.com. The blog is sited as one of the ways the sisters are expanding their options.
    Hmmmm, all you black playas out there had better get your game together or you may soon be playin’ with yourselves.

Harold Washington: A prediction to remember

 

  I never was Harold Washington's press secretary. I could have been. I was asked to be. But I turned down the job. Grayson Mitchell, then Alton Miller, were the two men to hold that position. I later would become the mayor's press secretary, after Harold died, when Eugene Sawyer succeeded him.
    What I did, for which mayor, has not seemed to matter most of these 20 years since Chicago's first black chief executive died on November 25 at his fifth floor desk. As many times as not, over the two decades, I've been referenced in casual conversations, as well as formal introductions, as Mayor Washington's press secretary.
    I always correct the mistake right after it's made. But I understand how it happens. I know that I am intrinsically and inextricably identified with Harold Washington and his march to city hall. Although Lou Palmer and Vernon Jarrett, two older, prominent black journalists, were early and often champions for Washington's historical journey, I was the first to predict the next mayor of Chicago would be black--without being an advocate. Instead, I analyzed, then presented the numbers. At the time, my theory was considered political pundit heresy.
    If you'd like to see a newspaper clip of my Chicago Tribune Perspective piece, click here to View this photo. If you're not interested in seeing the original, here's the November 8, 1982,Trib article re-typed:

Black may redo mayor script
By Monroe Anderson

    The latest crop of bumper stickers riding around town carry a simple message: "Hello, Richie! Goodbye, Jane!"

There is one gleaming flaw in this. It assumes that State's Atty. Richard M. Daley is the only person who could displace Jane Byrne in the February mayoral primary. But there is another possibility, one that ought to be given serious consideration: There may soon be a black boss in Chicago.
    Here is the way the conventional wisdom--reflected in the bumper sticker--goes: Forget the fact that there are only 105,430 Chicagoans who are, like Daley and Byrne, of Irish-American descent. Dismiss the fact that there are 1.2 Chicagoans of African-American descent. Ignore the fact that the second largest ethnic group in Chicago is Mexican-American with a population of 254,656 or that Polish-Americans are third with 206,208.
    Rather than evaluate the numbers, both bumper sticker authors and political pundits prefer to stick with the traditional Chicago political wisdom that the Irish will run the city as they have for more than a half a century.
    Any candidate other than Daley or Byrne, according to conventional Chicago political wisdom, is an also-ran. A black candidate, despite the fact that the black population is nearly five times greater than the next largest ethnic group in the city, can best work as a spoiler, pundits say.
    As their scenario goes, a black candidate such as U.S. Rep. Harold Washington [D., Ill.] or State Comptroller Roland Burris would only serve to keep Mayor Byrne in office. Their theory is that Mayor Byrne and the Chicago Democratic machine have a steady and given number of votes among all ethnic groups.
    The political theorists note that the black community, like other ethnic groups in the city, is not a monolith. They point to the last time Washington ran for mayor, during the special election in April 1977, to fill the post after Richard J. Daley's death. He received about 74,000 votes, which was 11 percent of the total cast. Machine candidate Michael A. Bilandic received more than 342,000 and the Polish-American candidate, Ald. Roman Pucinski, got more than 217,000 votes.
    That is not to say that blacks don't or won't vote as a bloc against a machine candidate. In November, 1972, thousands of machine-dependable blacks split their tickets to vote for Republican Bernard Carey over incumbent State's Atty. Edward V. Hanrahan, the Chicago Democrat who had led the 1989 police raid that resulted in the deaths of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Republican Carey took 9 of the then 14 black wards and the election.
    The black disenchantment with Byrne may not go as deep as it did against Hanrahan, but it is no secret that the mayor has dashed almost all the dreams her campaign promises inspired among the thousands of blacks who voted her into office.
    Theorists are predicting that the almost guaranteed huge black anti-Byrne vote will go to Daley. However, if a credible black candidate were to enter, making it a three-way race, conventional wisdom has it that Byrne would get her guaranteed votes while Daley and the black candidate would split the black protest vote.
    Conversely, the theory goes, with no major black candidate in the race, the anti-Byrne black vote combined with the perennial antimachine vote, fulfills the bumper sticker prophecy: "Hello Richie. Goodbye Jane."
    But the real behavior of blacks could upset these mathematical predictions. And one of the magic numbers is the record 70,000 black votes who joined the voting rolls just this year.
    There are now more than a half-million black registered voters in Chicago. When Byrne beat out incumbent Mayor Bilandic by 16,775 votes during the heated primary race in February, 1979, some 412,909 voters pulled her lever. If 69 percent of those blacks who have registered cast their votes for a black mayoral candidate, he or she would have that hypothetical winning number.
    And if this seems like a long shot, just consider the black voter turnout last week. Although neither Gov. Jim Thompson nor Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson ignited any passions in the black community, about 75 percent of black registered voters actually voted.
    The February race, which will be closer to home and may seem to offer the real possibility of jobs in a community with depression-level unemployment rather than just the venting of frustrations against Reaganomics, will demand much greater attention and be decidedly more heated.
    So, here is another scenario, quite different from that of the observers whose eyes are glued on the Byrne-Daley race: In a heated race including Byrne, Daley and an attractive black candidate such as a Washington or a Burris, racial identity could easily become a polarizing force as it has in a number of other cities where a black mayor was elected.
    Blacks now comprise about 40 per cent of the 1,510,000 registered voters in Chicago. In a black-white polarized primary race, which is already germinating thanks to Mayor Byrne'€™s political appointments over the last four years, both sides could easily end up voting color in the 90-plus percentile range. Thus, the numbers can tell the story better than reliance on past machine performances.
    If in an intensely heated campaign atmosphere, an overwhelming proportion of blacks voted for a single black candidate and whites split between the two or more white candidates, then Chicago could have its first black mayor.
    Of course, this assumes a unity in black voting that would be really quite remarkable in a Democratic primary--rather than in a Democratic-Republican contest. And it assumes that no more than one credible black candidate enters the race. But depending upon the degree to which the election became racially polarized, it is hypothetically possible.
    Naturally, the political pundits, the pollsters and the bumper sticker sloganeers consider all this a mission implausible. Those are the same people, incidentally, who didn't give an unknown Jane Byrne a snowball's chance in hell of defeating the incumbent machine candidate, Mayor Bilandic, just four years ago.

Just stop it

 

  Danny Davis was pulled over on the West Side by a couple of white Chicago cops early Monday morning for allegedly weaving and “driving left of center.” The incidence, which had all the earmarks of racial profiling, was not supposed to happen for at least a couple of reasons.
    1) Davis is a United States Representative and has been for the past decade. As a prominent Chicago politician–before going to Congress, Davis was a Cook County Commissioner and before then an alderman on the city council–you’d think the police would have given him a pass for what was, at the worst, bad driving. Since I grew up in Gary, Indiana, a Chicago suburb, and have lived in Chicago and worked as a journalist here for more than three decades, I know a lot about the city’s finest. I’d bet a year’s property taxes (which has just jumped to a heartburn-inducing $15,102.06 on my house) that IF the Chicago police had pulled over Congressman Daniel Lipinski or Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky or Congressman Peter Roskam they would have been a little more understanding and a little less harassing.
    2) Last year, Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Cline reminded his men and women in blue that there should be no open season for racial profiling of African Americans.
    But Cline is gone. He resigned a couple of months ago and Chicago is still Chicago, known coast-to-coast for its racial insensitivities. So, powerful Congressman or not, another black driver got pulled over by another white cop on suspicion of being suspicious.
    I know the feeling. Six years ago, I was stopped at high noon while driving on the West Side. At the time, I was Director of Station Services and Community Affairs at WBBM-TV. Damon Bryant, who was Director of Advertising and Promotion and the only other black department head at the station, was my passenger. We were two black men, dressed in suits, in my shiny, new 2001 Honda Accord, driving through one of the most economically depressed parts of town.
    An unmarked squad stopped me for not stopping at a stop sign where I had stopped, not only as a law-abiding driver, but because Damon and I were trying to get our bearing as we read street addresses along Madison Avenue while figuring out how much further we needed to go to get MacArthur’s restaurant.
    As I flipped open my wallet to show the officer my driver’s license, my CBS ID became visible. I got a pass for not running the stop sign. Rep. Davis was not so lucky. He got a ticket.
    He was as peeved Monday morning as I was pissed off back then. On May 14, 2006, when I was writing an op-ed page column for the Chicago Sun-Times, I wrote about two of my earlier experiences with racial profiling--and about another Davis, Shani. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Getting pulled over for driving while black unleashes anger
By Monroe Anderson

It was during the summer of '91 when I was first racially profiled while a middle-aged African-American. I'd stopped at Dunkin' Donuts on the corner of Fullerton and Elston and was driving towards home when a squad car's Mars' lights signaled me out. I pulled over and got out of my brand-new Honda Accord.

About 20 years before, I'd read somewhere that proper police protocol called for the driver to get out the car so that the officer could see that you were unarmed and therefore no threat to his being shot as he peered into your car window.

"What's the problem, officer?"

"You just went through a red light."

"I just came from the donut shop," I replied, puzzled because there was no traffic light along the short stretch between where I'd pulled out of the parking lot and where I'd been pulled over.

I got a strange stare before the policeman began to retreat.

"I'm sorry, brother."

I nodded, more puzzled than before. Why was this young white cop calling me brother? As I got back in my car, I caught a glimpse, in my rearview mirror, of the cap I'd forgotten I was wearing. The red and white CFD-embossed logo on the cap, which had been given to me three years earlier by the Chicago Fire Department commissioner when I was Mayor Eugene Sawyer's press secretary, read loud and clear. It was logical to conclude that I was a member of the brotherhood of street civil servants -- policemen and firemen -- and serve up an apology.

It didn't make me feel any better. While it doesn't compare to being introduced to Mr. Billy Club and his good buddy, Mr. Hand Cuffs, getting pulled over simply because of the color of my skin is a mini-insult that arouses big-time anger.

So when police Supt. Phil Cline last week reaffirmed his commitment to arrest the practice of racial profiling, I wanted to give Chicago's top cop a gold star for being a good guy.

My Dunkin' Donuts episode wasn't the last time I was stopped for no infraction. Years later, I was pulled over for driving while black in my wife's brand new 1998 Honda CRV as I went through a busy intersection in Lincoln Park. Remembering protocol, I got out the car.

"What's the problem officer?"

"Get back in the car. Keep both your hands visible."

I complied. How times had changed. I'd allegedly run the stop light at Fullerton and Racine. Again, I was puzzled because there was a car behind that followed me through the light. After I showed him my driver's license, revealing that I lived three-and-a-half blocks away, I got off with a warning.

About 18 months later, on Christmas Eve, I was the sole customer in a neighborhood jewelry store, shopping for my wife's gift. As the owner and I stood gossiping over the counter about one of our mutual acquaintances, the loudspeaker of an unmarked car barked out from in front of the store. "Is everything OK in there?"

The owner signaled to the patrol car on the street, indicating that there was no need to arrest me for shopping while black.

During Cline's news conference, Secretary of State Jesse White unveiled tips, explaining what motorists should do when pulled over by police, that will run in a new page in the official Illinois driver's education manual. These tips stem from last year's racial profiling incident involving state Sen. James Meeks, when his car was pulled over and he was cursed at by a Chicago cop.

I wonder what pointers might be offered for walking while black? Five years ago, pedestrian Shani Davis, the speed skater, was stopped by plainclothes cops in Rogers Park. He's now a plaintiff in a suit against the City of Chicago claiming that he was stopped and searched for illegal weapons because of the color of his skin.

For future protection, I strongly suggest that Davis wear his Olympic Gold medal around his neck when strolling Chicago's mean streets. And should the medal fail to repel the profilers, for the right price, I've got a Chicago Fire Department cap I'll reluctantly hand over.

New World Order

Black American culture dominates the world. It’s obvious and evident from one continent to the next.

Japanese youth are scratching and beat boxing and sporting the same urban African-American couture that you see in suburban Dallas or Chicago. There are hip hop songs written, sung and performed on music videos by Arabs. In South Korean, Charice Pempengco, a 15-year-old from the Phillipines, brought down the house on Star King, an Asian TV show akin to America's Got Talent, last month with a soul-stirring rendition of And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going from Dreamgirls–in English.

Photo courtesy japantoday.com

I’m pointing this out for the white racist and the black entertainers–rappers, comedians and jocks–on the home front who may be ignoring or missing this real-world reality.

President Bush has made millions of young people in the Arab world anti-American by unwisely shocking and awing, then occupying a major and symbolically important Muslim city. This uncalled for, and unnecessary, military assault on Baghdad threatens to give us the blues for decades to come.

Our exported culture may be able to ameliorate, if not overcome, this arrogant and imperialistic big-footing into places we’re not wanted. But, our young black entertainers must become mindful that the images they project reflect what African Americans are–and are not–to the rest of the world. I clearly remember an e-mail sent to me eight or nine years ago with a picture taken in Nigeria. It featured a shanty bar in Lagos. The name of the bar was hand-painted above the entrance: niggers.

The negatives travel as far and as wide as the good. When the images are negative, they also define and frequently limit blacks here at home, who are not as talented or rich or lucky as the entertainers transmitting them.

Thinking black entertainers must come to understand that they are our Goodwill Ambassadors at home and abroad and that the power they wield is a two-edge sword. We’re already hurting here. We don’t need to suffer any more self-inflicted pain.

What is it good for?

 

After being pimp-slapped by the Republicans for nearly a year, battered and bruised congressional Democrats have come to realize that all four cheeks are so red and raw that they have none left to turn.

Yesterday, senate Repubs road-blocked a $50 billion bill by Democrats that would have paid for several months of combat but also would have ordered troop withdrawals from Iraq to begin within 30 days. In response to the Republican resistance to the will of the American people, the Democrats are finally promising to do what the majority of Americans voted for them to do in last November’s election: bring the troops home.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has come up with a backhanded but effective means of making sure that the end is near for Bush's big blunder; they’re going to sit on the president’s $196 billion request for war spending until next year, forcing his administration to account for its misdeeds.

I say it’s about time.

As an op-ed page columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times, five months ago I pointed out the shortcomings of the Iraq occupation and of the new majority party’s failure to end it.

This is what I wrote back then. Today, while the death toll in Iraq has dropped from record numbers earlier in the year, it keeps on rising.

Bring troops home now

May 20, 2007

By Monroe Anderson

We're waist-deep in George W. Bush's nightmarish Middle East misadventure as the new, theoretically empowered Democrats are difficult to distinguish from the old, hamstrung Dems of a year ago. They're still too timid.

Rather than deftly acting to bring the troops home, the Democrats continue their eye-shifting and throat-clearing while the killing and dying go on and on. Last week, the new majority party yielded to the oxymoron argument that we have to support the troops by keeping them in the line of fire. The Feingold-Reid Iraq Bill that would have cut the funding and thereby forced the president to bring the troops home was defeated Wednesday in the Senate. On a procedural vote, the proposal that would have cut off money for combat operations in Iraq after March 31 of next year fell 31 votes short of the number needed to advance, losing 29-67.

The bill was defeated even as three U.S. soldiers remain missing and the death toll in Iraq is rising. The bill was defeated even as our puppet Iraqi government continues with its plans for a two-month vacation while the American men and women serving in their country are getting three months added to their yearlong tours of duty. The bill was defeated even as reports of poor care at Walter Reed Hospital for the mounting number of wounded troops is barely yesterday's news.

The Americans who voted the Democrats into power have been let down. Instead of counting on the Democrats to deliver on their implicit promise to end the occupation, we continue to count the costs of not correcting Bush's calamitous course. Those costs have been enormous in human casualties and financial resources. More than 3,300 U.S. military killed and more than 25,000 wounded -- nearly 1,000 of those amputees. A minimum of 63,796, a maximum of 69,850 civilians have been killed, according to the Iraqi Body Count Web site. More than 400 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars squandered. And we're not getting much bang for our buck. Daily attacks in Iraq have fallen only slightly to 149 in April from 157 in March. Mortar rounds are now battering the Green Zone, Baghdad's last presumed safe refuge.

Last week's vote was a loss for Wisconsin's Sen. Russell Feingold and other Democrats who want to bring the Iraq occupation to a halt. But the undertaking forced Democratic presidential hopefuls, including Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, previously reluctant to limit war funding, to come out in favor of the measure. Unfortunately, 19 Dems couldn't or wouldn't heed the distress signal that the American electorate fired last November, joining 47 Republicans in the vote to end the occupation funding. Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, is one of those Democrats. He said he opposes any measure that cuts off money for the war because ''we don't want to send the message to the troops'' that Congress does not support them.

That argument -- made smugly by legislators sitting safely and serenely in Washington, D.C. -- is about as logic-defying as others buzz-worded by the incompetent and corrupt Bush administration. We know them by heart. They play well to our emotions but not as well when we step back to question them. For example, could it be that setting a deadline to bring the troops home benchmarks the end of Americans dying for a continuously changing cause? What job are we staying to get done? Why are we staying where we're not welcomed? How are we supposed to secretly withdraw our troops without the insurgents knowing we're leaving?

We shocked and awed our way into Iraq four years ago, so if Baghdad should become an al-Qaida stronghold, what's to stop us from shocking and awing the city again? If 6 million Jews, surrounded by more than 200 million Arabs, have not been annihilated, why do we believe that an Iraq withdrawal will lead to a pitched battle with invading terrorist forces on Main Street in Peoria?

And, one last question: How much American blood has to flow to drown out the civil war in Iraq or cut through the hollow patriotic sloganeering here at home?

A Note on News and Notes

    My Diplomatic Immunity  column on Blacks and Blackwater landed me a seat Monday on Bloggers Roundtable for News and Notes.
    I couldn’t believe how rusty I’d gotten.
    My first radio interview was in New York City, as a Newsweek intern, after I had the dubious honor of being one of the first journalists beaten by the Chicago Police during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. I can’t count the number of radio interviews I’ve done since. Or television interviews. My first was on the Phil Donahue show in 1976, after I’d participated in a Chicago Tribune investigative series on automobile repair fraud.
    I became a regular on radio and television talk shows when I covered the Harold Washington campaign in the early 1980s and City Hall, once he became mayor. As Press Secretary to Mayor Eugene Sawyer, it was my job to speak to newspaper, radio and TV reporters daily. I even executive-produced and hosted my own public affairs television talk show, Common Ground, on WBBM-TV, a CBS owned-and-operated station, for eight years.
    All that to say, I am no stranger to broadcast media.
    But I've been laying low for the past five years so I've only been a radio guest five or six times during that stretch. On Monday’s NPR show, I was not all that quick or agile or authoritative in my answers to host Farai Chideya. I stuttered and sputtered while the other two guests for our segment, Kim Tempest Bradford, of the blog The Angry Black Woman and Anthony Bradley, creator of The Institute blog, were real pros as we talked about blacks in the military, about a white Homeland Security employee’s appearance in blackface at an office Halloween party, Oprah’s move into YouTube and the Jena 6 donations.
    I hadn't done a good job. I was depressed. But, I did what I did. Good thing for me, practice makes better, which is what I was the next day when I taped a segment on the 20th anniversary of the death of Mayor Washington for Eight Forty-Eight on Chicago’s Public Radio station, WBEZ-FM.
    The program won’t air until next Friday, November 23. But, what a difference a day made.

The Obama One

    

    When it comes to Barack Obama, Andrew Sullivan, the self-confessed libertarian conservative journalist, is now a true believer. In his essay, “Goodbye to All That,” in the current issue of Atlantic Monthly, Sullivan writes about Obama as if the African American presidential contender is, like Neo from The Matrix, The One.
    “Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us,” writes Sullivan. “So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.”
    Sullivan repeated and expanded his vision of Obama as our nation’s savior during an On Point with Tom Ashbrook appearance on Boston’s public radio station, stating: “I think that the country needs this man” to end the struggle between the left and the right, the blue states and the red states.
    Both the Atlantic Monthly piece and the WBUR-FM radio program are long but worth the read and listen.
    That said, let me expand: I believe Sullivan has gone way beyond the pale.   
    Now, don’t get me wrong. I, too, think Obama would be good for America.  I will trip the light fantastic if, a year from today, the news is 24/7 about President-elect Barack Obama. But, as a Baby Boomer, I don’t like Obama’s saber rattling, which verges on a declaration of generational war. And I definitely don’t like Sullivan’s argument that declaring a truce in America’s cultural war would be a good thing.
    For the past generation and a half, an evil cabal of conservative power brokers has steered our nation into a sour spot that is un-American and disturbing to any true patriot. The greedy routinely exploit the needy. Our constitutional rights have been put on hold. Compassion has been labeled a weakness rather than a virtue.
    We can thank George W. Bush’s slow-wittedness and blundering ways for flipping over that polished rock and exposing its slimy underbelly. We can thank Bush and his fellow neo-cons for, like al-Qaida in Iraq, going too far. The empty-hearted neo-cons are ducking for cover.
    So, just as we’re headed back to the future, where ideas take precedent over bumper-sticker slogans and Americans can care for their fellow Americans without stigma, Sullivan would like to see the radical right let off the hook. He sees the genesis of the American culture war born out of the 1960s ideological clash of the Boomers. Something that hardened into a Hatfields and McCoys feud or a Crypts and Bloods rumble.  He thinks that during the inauguration the newly sworn-in President Obama would proclaim those immortal words of Rodney King–“Can’t we all get along”–and then it will happily ever after happen.
    I don’t think so. I suspect Sullivan, a 44-year-old Englishman, may be too young and too foreign to fully understand the genesis of our nation’s historical divide: slavery. The roots of our nation’s culture war can be traced directly to the Civil War and the South’s fight for state’s rights and the right to continue its peculiar institution.
    During Reconstruction, the North ceded the culture war to the South. The culture war  broke out again in the 1950s as the civil rights movement. In the 60s, it morphed into the struggle between those who were against the Vietnam War and those who were for it. Today, the culture clash is more geographically and generationally diverse but is still alive and well and pitching.
    And unless Obama is truly “Barack the magic Negro” as Rush Limbaugh, the radical right’s mouthpiece, parodied him earlier this year, then we liberals need to keep our communications lines open and our minds clear.

On Blacks and Blackwater

My column this week at Ebonyjet.com points out how there are fewer blacks joining America's volunteer military and more contracts for war profiteer Blackwater USA. To read others, visit the website.

Diplomatic Immunity

the military's twisted path to blackwater

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

By Monroe Anderson

Just as the prophets of mass destruction were reassuring us (again) that we're winning the war in Iraq, another wrench got thrown into their forever generating cycle of spin in the form of members of the diplomatic corps who came thisclose to chanting "hell no, we won't go."

The rant was ignited by the State Department's new rules forcing foreign diplomats to fill a surging number of vacant positions in Iraq or face being fired. The revolt erupted because members of the foreign service have not been shoved into serving overseas -– or else -– since that quagmire of a generation ago, Vietnam. Although only three have been killed in Iraq since the U.S. invasion, American diplomats remain high-value targets.

"In any other embassy in the world," said Jack Crotty, a 36-year veteran of the foreign service, "the embassy would be closed at this point." Speaking anything but diplomatically, Crotty called the forced deployment to the US embassy in Baghdad a "potential death sentence."

For the 200,000 troops currently deployed there that is certainly an apt assessment. That point, and the pointlessness, of the Iraq occupation has not been missed by many young black Americans. They see the president's war as unnecessary, unjust and unpopular. And they know that, too often, black soldiers are the first to be marshaled to combat jobs and the last to be promoted to a higher rank.

And apparently they know not to fall for the Bush okie-doke. Since the start of the Iraqi war, blacks have been turning away from the military in record numbers. In fiscal year 2000, more than 42,000 African American men and women signed up. Five years later, slightly more than 17,000 volunteered. That's a 58 percent drop -– and a dramatic departure from the past.

From the Revolutionary War through Vietnam, blacks were front and center when given a chance to stand up and be counted. They believed the armed forces were a shot at establishing first-class citizenship and a reliable route to living the American dream. Now it's time for new recruits. In the five-year period when blacks were saying "thanks, but no thanks," the military was recruiting more Latino and Asian immigrants who see service as a path to American citizenship. The number of Latino enlistees grew to 13.5 percent from 10.5 percent and Asian enlistees grew to 4.1 percent from 2.6 percent.

Still, their growing ranks are not enough to make sure that we, as our war president is fond of saying, "get the job done." The simple solution? Outsourcing. Just as the Bush administration has overseen the escalation of outsourcing American jobs to foreign lands, it has been passionate in surrendering duties traditionally performed by U.S. troops to mercenaries.

Blackwater USA, which is hellbent on becoming the mother of all war profiteers, has been a big beneficiary of the government's privatization policy. Dead set on competing with U.S. national security operations much like Federal Express competes with the U.S. Post Office, the private military company has already garnered more than $1 billion in government contracts–two thirds of them no bid.

More than 90 percent of Blackwater's revenue comes from the Bush administration. And you can believe the $50,000 annual salary for enlisted personnel pales in comparison to the $445,000 annual tab for each Blackwater “employee.” And while there are periodic reports reaffirming Blackwater's shoot-first-question-later approach in Iraq, their soldiers of fortune are responsible to no government department or official.

The U.S. military's transition to fewer blacks and more Blackwater is an obvious distress signal. Young African Americans may have been the canary in the coal mine but now most Americans have come to see the light. The three dead diplomats pale in comparison to the numbers of others who had been sentenced to die in the war with evolving explanations on why we must fight it. Meanwhile, 3,856 US soldiers -–a record 853 in 2007 alone -– and somewhere between 76,226 and 83,042 innocent Iraqi civilians have died.

Rest assured there are many more sentences to come.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He is a regular contributor to Ebonyjet.com.